Your Nerdy Embarrassments

[WindKnight]

So, those moments where you've manage to embarrass yourself as a nerd, not by being a nerd.

As a preteen I read a trilogoy of books called Hoods Army (clue one) about an alien invasion where the aliens had energy shield taht reacted to projectile velocity, so bullet firing wepons were useless, but bows were utterly lethal (clue 2), And our hero, Hood, led a resistance against the aliens, with help from the badass action lady Marion (clue 3), a big guy named John Little (clue 4) and Will Scarlet (clue 5).

Despite all these Blatant Clues, it wasn't until I described the books to a friend 20 years later I realized I'd been reading Robin Hood - IN SPACE!


Also, having enjoyed the first Michael Bay Transformers movie, I was reacting to promos of Revenge of the fallen with lots and lots of enthusiasm, especially when they announced Jetfire was in it, and I was loudly declaring there was no way this wasn't going to be the best thing ever!

At the same time, the first poster emerged for Transformers Animated emerged.. and I reacted with disgust. It was obviously awful! They'd made Prowl a NINJA! How dumb was that?

Lets just say my Samurai Prowl toy stands as testament to how wrong I was.

EDIT

And I just realized I posted this in the wrong forum, so chalk me up for number three. Any way I can get this moved?

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

I only realised the other day that Sir Killalot on Robot Wars is designed to look like a knight. It has a fucking lance.

 

[twistedmic]

Does just recently realizing the Borg from Star Trek TNG most likely got their name because the are cyBorgs count?

 

[Fox12]

I was listening to the protoman album. It has characters named doctor light, doctor wiley, and is about robots. Somehow it went totally over my head the first time that it was about megaman.

 

[Ryotknife]

hmmm.

I used to play a NES game back in the day called Dragon Power. Last year, I just realized it was a dragonball game. Sure, at the time i played it i never heard of the anime Dragonball, but this realization came a good 12 years after watching the show.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I once argued with a classmate about the guy playing Gandalf being the same guy (as I know now, guys) who played Dumbledore.

Oddly enough I won that argument, but when I got home that day and thought about it more I was pretty embarrassed.

 

[the December King]

Talking to a pack of movie nerds I had just met, I casually said that John Carpenter's The Thing was released in 1984. It just slipped out. But this was not the crowd for that.

Got tore apart during the ensuing waves of nerd-dom, correcting me into oblivion.

I looked like a fucking idiot.

Honestly, this happens a lot to me about facts like that. In the end, I reckon I'm actually a pretty dumb nerd, a fairly unenthusiastic geek.

 

[Something Amyss]

I can't remember what it was, but I was writing something about geek culture and accidentally stumbled on a double meaning and I think I may have cut myself with the edge of my glasses in the facepalm. Like, "well, that was so obvious even my glasses wish to do me harm!"

I was listening to the protoman album. It has characters named doctor light, doctor wiley, and is about robots. Somehow it went totally over my head the first time that it was about megaman.

I thought the Protomen were literally only known for their connections to Mega Man. Even the people I know who have heard them because of their Queen tribute album know them as such.

...I'm not helping, am I?

 

[Fox12]

I can't remember what it was, but I was writing something about geek culture and accidentally stumbled on a double meaning and I think I may have cut myself with the edge of my glasses in the facepalm. Like, "well, that was so obvious even my glasses wish to do me harm!"

I was listening to the protoman album. It has characters named doctor light, doctor wiley, and is about robots. Somehow it went totally over my head the first time that it was about megaman.

I thought the Protomen were literally only known for their connections to Mega Man. Even the people I know who have heard them because of their Queen tribute album know them as such.

...I'm not helping, am I?

I discovered them in about the most roundabout way possible. Someone used Light up the Night in the background of their video. I really liked it, so I looked up the band and listened to both of their albums. It wasn't until later that I put it all together and slapped myself.

Can you tell I'm not the biggest Megaman fan?

 

[Something Amyss]

Can you tell I'm not the biggest Megaman fan?

Well, nobody's perfect.

...I think I've played two Mega Man games since the NES. So I can't judge.

 

[Aerosteam]

It wasn't me, but when I mentioned that Ryu was in Smash Bros a friend of mine asked "Who's Ryu?" and I was completely baffled. I mentioned this to another friend, who thought the same as me and we both berated him for the rest of they day, which he deserved. He said he doesn't play fighting games - which isn't an excuse as Ryu is one of the most iconic video game characters ever. Sometimes I question our friendship.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I thought I was a pretty decent mystery fan with my love of Persona 4 and G Senjo No Maou until I played through the whole of Umineko No Naku Koro Ni. Especially once you hit the second book, they go full meta on you and characters start throwing Agatha Christie references at you wholesale, even going into what it means to even be a mystery story at all.

Then there's Bern laying the verbal smackdown on Battler (and by extension most likely the reader) when she reveals he's not even been playing by mystery rules for the entire first four games so he practically had no chance of winning from the get go.

"Fantasy vs Mystery? No, you've been playing Fantasy vs Anti-Fantasy, i'm afraid."

Fuckin' scrub doesn't even play by Van Dine or Knox, I mean really.

 

[Mister K]

... Does the fact that I still haven't finished LotR trilogy count?

 

[Zombie_Fish]

The first time I played a James Bond multiplayer game I tried shooting someone at point blank range without realising that I had unintentionally switched weapons.

The weapon that I switched to was a rocket launcher.

I killed both me and my team mate.

He didn't trust me in FPS games for several months after that.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

... Does the fact that I still haven't finished LotR trilogy count?

That's something I guess we're gonna find out together, buddy, 'cause I haven't either.
I did see Hobbit: Desolation Of Smaug though. For the Godzilla trailer.

Anyway.

I think it was a year ago I finally learned The Punisher's real name.
Yep, didn't know his name until my friend made some crack about calling Frank Castle to solve a problem and I said "Who's Frank Castle?"
And his response was "THE. PUNISHER." in a rather disagreeable tone.

 

[Queen Michael]

I was talking to a girl at a convention. She was cosplaying Konan from Naruto, so we were talking about that series, and although I'd rea the first 45 books of the series, I couldn't remember much and kept not knowing what she was talking about.